HKS Smart Healthcare

The fastest growing population in America is the elderly and while long term care has vastly improved over the past decades, much can still be done to develop a more appropriate environment that promotes healthy, successful aging. Successful aging is defined as the avoidance of disease and disability, maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and continued engagement in social and productive activities. The image many Americans see when asked about getting older is not typically a favorable one and ranges from an array of physical disabilities to the burden one may put on family members. Our job as designers, architects, and planners should be to provide an environment that will fulfill the needs and desires of the older population using evidence based design. The social and physical environments of long term care play a significant part in the well-being of a resident by helping establish a sense of community vs. institutionalism and isolation.

My thesis research at Texas Tech University focused on this idea of belonging and interaction within long term care.  I used my research to develop a prototypical continuing care retirement community that uses principles of traditional neighborhood development in order to promote successful aging and provide a higher quality of life for elderly residents.  See the link below for a summary document of my thesis.  Would love any thoughts our readers may have.

PDF of report summary:  An Integrative Approach for Successful Aging in Continuing Care Retirement Communities

It was almost too obvious. Sitting among thousands of fellow designers, planners and innovators in the healthcare design field.

I was taken entirely aback by the keynote speaker at a conference we were all in attendance for as he spoke on a topic that realistically struggles to exist in today’s culture: empathy. Empathy is not a new concept; in fact, “there was a time not so long ago when there was a broad and deep connection between producers and consumers that allowed everyone to prosper.” Over time, there have been many contributors to the gap that separates us today; however, no one more guilty than myself. What was Dev Patnaik [the aforementioned keynote speaker] saying to this room full of creative minds? What were the actual implications for me as a young, aspiring architect in this world that has, in some ways, lost touch with one another? Before I could entertain another big question, the overarching answer became so apparent that it was obvious. To be better in my world – the creating, designing and planning of healthcare facilities – I need to know their world – the hurting, healing and caring of those who live and work in said healthcare facilities. And it would not be enough to simply know their world by reading and researching about it or by talking to those who provide or receive care in it or by understanding the latest trends driving it. No, I want to know their world experientially by actually putting the black patent pumps up for a season and walking in their shoes. Literally.

Early one morning in 1979, Pattie Moore did a peculiar thing. A young designer living in New York, she woke up, got out of bed, and started to make herself frail. She strapped herself into a body brace that made her shoulders hunch forward. She hid her auburn locks under a white wig and painted her eyelashes gray. She plugged up her ears so she couldn’t hear. And she put on horn-rimmed glasses that blurred her vision. Transformed into a woman more than three times her actual age, Pattie headed out into the world, a wooden cane guiding her path. Leaving her Gramercy Park walk-up, Pattie stepped out into a land that was unlike any she had ever experienced. Pattie had made herself old, and now even her own neighborhood looked strange to her.

                                                                                                      – Excerpt from Wired to Care

In Mr. Patnaik’s book, he goes on to say that through experiences such as the one described above influencing her work as an industrial designer, Pattie Moore has helped countless of people’s everyday life become a little more livable. And, “in doing so, she also revealed an important but oft-forgotten truism: People discover unseen opportunities when they have a personal and empathetic connection with the world around them. For individuals, that means developing the ability to walk in other people’s shoes. For companies and other large institutions, that means finding a way to bring the rest of the world inside their walls.”

As the 2010 – 2011 HKS Healthcare Fellow, I was driven by this idea of understanding, experientially and empathetically, the environment in which I am giving my career and my life to designing. Given the time frame of the fellowship and the gulf of opportunities that exist within a hospital to do this, I have selected a single service line to concentrate on for the purposes of this study. To experience and understand the environment of a cancer patient at THR Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, I hope to have the chance to follow a diverse selection of key individuals working and living in this world, gaining as many perspectives as possible over a six month period of time. What is a 12-hour shift like for the nurse who selflessly cares for these patients on the inpatient oncology unit? Or how about the pharmacist responsible for delivering the necessary medications on time to the unit? Or the care coordinator who labors to orchestrate the treatment and the timeline for the healing and recovery of these patients? Even within the confines of a single service line, the opportunities to know this world are many.

Read the full paper here.